Aerial vehicles such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used for performing surveillance, reconnaissance, and exploration tasks for military and civilian applications. Such vehicles may carry a payload configured to perform a specific function. Aerial vehicles may be multi-rotor aerial vehicles.
Typical flight control methods for multi-rotor aerial vehicles utilize cascaded proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control in which attitude control is cascaded with angular velocity control. Based on conventional PID adjustment methods, the parameters for an inner loop of the control (angular velocity loop) and outer loop of the control (angle loop) are sequentially tuned. There is a strong dependence on the calibration results of the inner loop. If the inner loop tracking performance is not accurate, it will directly affect the entire result. However, the process of conventional PID tuning is complex and lengthy, and during the process, issues of system divergence and instability can easily occur. Furthermore, traditional control methods only make adjustments after disturbances have already caused the aerial vehicle to produce angular velocity, and under certain circumstances, disturbance rejection performance cannot achieve optimal state.